My Lara Is Not a Sex Bombshell: Sophie Turner Reframes Lara Croft for Amazon’s Tomb Raider Series
In a recent interview with the LA Times while promoting her Prime Video series Steal, Sophie Turner shared a clear creative direction for her upcoming take on Lara Croft in Amazon’s Tomb Raider TV series. Turner said her Lara is being shaped around capability and character motivation rather than the hyper sexualized image that defined early era marketing for the franchise, and she framed this as an intentional choice aligned with what the showrunners want to spotlight.
Turner’s positioning is direct and easy to understand in the context of Lara Croft’s legacy. For a long time, Lara was sold as both an adventurer and an icon built heavily around visual appeal, a tone that carried through parts of the older games and even the Angelina Jolie films. Turner is signaling a different value proposition for the series: Lara as a protagonist defined by competence, confidence, and purpose, not by being framed as a fantasy. Her quote lands as a brand realignment statement as much as a character statement, with Turner emphasizing that her version of Lara is about her story and what drives her, and that Lara is unashamedly capable and does not hide her strengths.
The other major takeaway from the interview is the physical commitment behind the role. Turner said she has never trained harder for any part than she has for Tomb Raider, and she describes the process as a personal milestone that she feels she achieved even before filming begins. She also connects that training to a new mindset as a mother, describing how her instincts have shifted from purely escape focused scenarios to feeling more prepared to fight back if threatened. For longtime fans, this is a meaningful detail because it points to a Lara who reads as physically credible on screen, a crucial ingredient if the show wants to compete in a landscape where action choreography and performance authenticity have become baseline expectations.
From a franchise perspective, this direction is not coming out of nowhere. The more recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy already moved away from Lara’s earlier pin up framing and leaned harder into survival, resilience, and growth. Turner’s comments suggest the Amazon series is continuing that trajectory and betting that modern audiences want a Lara defined by agency and execution, not by camera framing.
Looking forward, this also adds context to the next major interactive iteration of the franchise. The upcoming game Tomb Raider Catalyst is in development at Crystal Dynamics and is currently scheduled for 2027. If the TV series and the next game are aligned on tone, the franchise could be setting up a more consistent modern identity across both screen and controller.
Would you rather see Tomb Raider lean fully into grounded survival and physical realism, or should Lara keep a more stylish larger than life edge while still respecting modern character writing?
